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PL/I Cafe

About this blog

Welcome to the IBM Rational PL/I community. Here you will find the latest technical and business information, and educational information about PL/I and related z/OS and AIX topics including IMS, CICS, and Rational Developer for System z.

One of the new options introduced in the new 4.2 release of Enterprise PL/I
is the UNROL L option. However, to understand it, you first need to understand
what the compiler does with loops.
Usually, the compiler turns a DO loop into a sequence of instructions which is
followed by a test and then a conditional branch back to repeat those instructions
with some updated values (and the sequence of instructions may be preceded by a
conditional test to see if the loop should be run at all).
In some situations, the optimizer can make this... [More]

Webcast Join our experts, Ray Jones, Vice President, IBM System z® Software, and Kevin Stoodley, IBM Fellow and CTO for Enterprise Modernization Tools, Compilers and Security, to learn how IBM’s latest compilers, middleware and tools can help you stay on the technology curve. In this complimentary webcast, Ray and Kevin will discuss best practices and approaches to plan and execute a successful compiler migration, alongside CICS®, IMS™ and DB2® upgrades. They will also go over IBM’s strategy for compilers and tools on System z to help you... [More]

This blog entry is the first of two articles that will provide some guidance on how to work
with DB2 large objects (LOBs) in PL/I. They both refer to the 'pliclob.pli' file in the PL/I Cafe 'Files'
section for samples of actual code.
One way to use LOB data from a DB2 table is to declare a host variable
large enough to hold all of the LOB data. This requires your program to
allocate large amounts of storage and requires DB2 to move large amounts
of data. This can be inefficient or impractical.
Or you can use LOB locators and LOB... [More]

In the previous blog entry we showed how Character Large Objects (CLOBs)
can be manipulated with LOB locators. In this blog we will discuss
the use of LOB file references.
LOB file reference variables are also very useful when working with
LOBs. The are used to import or export data between a LOB column and
an external file outside the DB2 system.
The benefits of using LOB file reference variables are that they:
- use less CPU time than moving LOB data with a host variable
because the movement of the data would not be overlapped... [More]

Check out this demo showing how to code PL/I to interface with AIX. Using the Power systems sandbox, you can try PL/I for AIX and create a network application in PL/I. Optimize server performance and programmer productivity with IBM
compilers Network application in PL/I: networking, system APIs

PL/I Compilers are now live on the Request for Enhancement (RFE)
Community. It is a great place where you can collaborate with
development teams and other product users. Our development team will
review your RFE and provide status updates throughout its lifecycle. Here is links to the Community : PL/I RFE Looking forward to hearing from you.

Check out all
the information about the latest release of Enterprise PL/I for z/OS.
You can get a summary of the release as well as all the announcement
details. See what's new with Enterprise PL/I for z/OS, V4.3 including enhancements to
leverage the latest z/OS. For all the details about the Enterprise
PL/I for z/OS, V4.3 announcement, see IBM Enterprise PL/I for z/OS V4.3 delivers performance improvements and usability enhancements . ... [More]

At times, it is useful to be able to tailor the compiler to meet the needs of your organization. For example, you might want to suppress certain messages or alter the severity of others. You might want to perform a specific function with each compilation, such as logging statistical information about the compilation into a file. A compiler user exit handles this type of functions. With PL/I, you can write your own user exit or use the exit provided with the product, either 'as is' or slightly modified depending on what you want to do... [More]

Enterprise PL/I for z/OS has consistently delivered innovations to help developers maintain and create applications optimized for deployment on IBM System z servers. Like COBOL, PL/I also focuses on delivering new features to improve performance, productivity, and modernization of proven, business critical applications. IBM has delivered a new release of the PL/I compiler every year since 1999 on System z. The announcement of Enterprise PL/I for z/OS V4.4 has kept this streak alive and reaffirms IBM's commitment to PL/I on... [More]

Today, IBM announced Enterprise PL/I for z/OS V4.4 and z/OS XL C/C++ 2.1. At SHARE in Boston , being held August 11-16, Visda Vokshoori , from the IBM compiler development team, will present the following sessions about these latest PL/I and C/C++ compilers for z/OS. Session 13789: What's New in Enterprise PL/I and C/C++ will discuss all of the new features of the new compiler versions. Enterprise PL/I for z/OS 4.4 features discussed will include: Improved performance of PL/I applications Improved exploitation of zEC12 and zBC12... [More]

The PL/I workstation compiler supports the following interfaces to other products: 1. Using the sort program The compiler provides an interface called PLISRTx (x = A, B, C, or D) that allows you to make use of the IBM-supplied Sort programs. To use the Sort program you must include the correct PL/I statements in your source program and specify the correct data sets in your JCL. 2. Interlanguage Communication between PL/I and C The Interlanguage Communication (ILC) between PL/I and C is supported. You can write PL/I code that either calls or is... [More]

ALLOCATE is a storage control built-in function, which allocates storage of the specified size in the heap. You can also use ALLOCATE to allocate the specified size in the specified area. When you specify ALLOCATE (n) , ALLOCATE allocates storage of size n in heap storage and returns the pointer to the allocated storage. If necessary, n is converted to REAL FIXED BINARY (31,0) . If the requested amount of storage is not available, the STORAGE condition is raised. The ALLOCATE built-in function now has the AREA reference as a new... [More]

Check out all the information about the latest release of Enterprise PL/I for z/OS. You can get a summary of the release as well as all the announcement details. See what's new with Enterprise PL/I for z/OS, V4.4 including enhancements to leverage the latest z/OS. For all the details about the Enterprise PL/I for z/OS, V4.4 announcement, see here .